A Survey Of Chinese Senior Middle School Students' Beliefs About Autonomous English Learning

Since the 1970s, many researchers and teachers in the field of foreign language teaching and learning have been exploring how to improve foreign language teaching efficiency from learners'perspectives. Of all these learners'perspectives, learner autonomy has been a"buzzword"within the context of language learning. Also, the goals of modern language teaching and new insights into the process of language learning have led to researchers'interest in helping language learners become autonomous learners.On the basis on humanistic learning theories, constructive views of education, cognitive psychology, the present study aims to examine the beliefs about learner autonomy of some Chinese senior middle school students. The subjects in the study were 147 two-year students from a key senior middle school in Fengcheng City. By asking these subjects to fill up a questionnaire, the study attempts to answer three research questions: 1) What are the general beliefs held by Chinese senior middle school students about learner autonomy in language learning? 2) Are there any differences in the beliefs about learner autonomy between proficient students and less proficient students? 3) What is the relationship between students'beliefs about learner autonomy and their English proficiency? The data were analyzed by SPSS 13.0. For the purposes of providing answers to the three research questions, I employed descriptive statistics, independent T-test and bivariate correlation analysis respectively.The findings inform us that the majority of the subjects are willing to assume responsibility for their own language learning. They take a positive attitude toward the roles of the teacher and the nature of English language learning with regard to autonomous English learning. However, most of them are unaware of the importance of feedback and they lack sufficient knowledge and skills to monitor and evaluate their English learning. As a result, their understanding of learner autonomy is quite shallow. Secondly, the proficient students differ significantly from the less proficient students in terms of the beliefs about sense of self-efficacy, important strategies and learner independence. Those who are dependent on themselves in their language learning achieve higher English proficiency than those who depend on the teacher. In addition, the results demonstrate statistically significant relationships to English proficiency for all these variables, most representing positive variation.The findings above can suggest several implications for English teaching and learning in senior middle schools in China. Firstly, English teachers should help their students enhance the confidence in their ability to learn English, and they should also help their students to improve the use of learning strategies consciously. Secondly, English teachers should assume a great role in developing and changing learners'beliefs in the process of autonomous English learning. It is the teacher's responsibility to increase students'awareness of learner autonomy and train them to learn how to learn. As for the schools, effective innovations should be taken in the teaching ideology and way of evaluating students'learning outcomes. All the schools need to improve teaching facilities for providing better autonomous learning environment.